The position
The argument has been consistent since 2007. Manitoba has abundant low-emission hydroelectric power. Several of its neighbours generate a substantial share of theirs by burning fossil fuels. Power moved east or west can therefore displace higher-emitting generation elsewhere while giving Manitoba Hydro a market beyond the one it has.
Three things are often run together and are worth separating. A nationally integrated grid, a western intertie between specific provinces, and individual export contracts are related but not interchangeable, and they carry different costs, timelines and approvals. Fletcher’s proposals have mostly concerned the second: new interprovincial transmission capacity westward, rather than a single national system.
The obstacles are not only political. Interprovincial transmission raises questions of capital cost, cost allocation between provinces, regulatory approval in more than one jurisdiction, reliability standards, environmental assessment, and the rights and consent of affected Indigenous nations. His case has been that the benefits justify working through those questions, not that they are absent.
The federal record, 2007 to 2015
In February 2007 he entered the Manitoba transmission debate publicly, accusing the provincial government of being disingenuous in claiming to support an east-west grid while rejecting an east-side Lake Winnipeg route for Bipole III, and objecting to the longer west-side alternative on grounds of cost and line losses.
That route decision was contested on more than cost. Weighing against an east-side line were the largely intact boreal forest on the east side of Lake Winnipeg and a long-running World Heritage bid by four Anishinaabe First Nations, Bloodvein River, Little Grand Rapids, Pauingassi and Poplar River, whose territory was inscribed by UNESCO in 2018 as Pimachiowin Aki, a mixed cultural and natural site of some 2.9 million hectares. UNESCO’s own evaluation file records Canada’s assurance that transmission lines would instead be built well to the west of the property. Indigenous opinion was not uniform: while the nominating First Nations sought protection from development, other east-side communities pressed for a line and an all-weather road as economic infrastructure. Announcing the decision in December 2007, the province said the west side would “improve reliability and protect our exports and the environment.” A later independent economic review took a different view of the cost, and reported finding no evidence that the World Heritage application would have been declined had a line run on the east side.
After the November 2008 federal Throne Speech committed Canada to drawing 90 per cent of its electricity from non-emitting sources by 2020, he described the target as an opportunity for Manitoba, tying it to both an east-west grid and northern hydroelectric development. In April 2010, then Minister of State for Democratic Reform, he raised the east-west grid on the floor of the House during debate on the budget implementation bill. In May 2010 two opposition members told the House that the Minister of State for Democratic Reform from Winnipeg had been pressing the case inside his own caucus.
The fullest federal statement came on 10 February 2014, when he used a Statement by Members to set out the argument whole: the emissions case, the engineering precedent, and a funding route.
In 2013 he took the argument westward, proposing a northern transmission line from Manitoba through Saskatchewan to Alberta and the oil sands, in a Winnipeg Free Press interview in August and in his own iPolitics column in September. He returned to the same ground in a Free Press analysis piece in November 2015.
The Manitoba record, 2016 to 2019
Elected to the Manitoba Legislature in 2016, he carried the argument into provincial debate, where it met a harder set of facts. Manitoba had committed to major new generation without an assured export market, and prices on the spot market had fallen sharply. From 2017 he argued repeatedly that the most useful thing Manitoba could do to reduce emissions was to export its power, and that building generation while simultaneously paying to suppress domestic demand was incoherent.
He was equally direct about governance. He spoke the day the Manitoba Hydro board resigned in March 2018, calling it a vote of non-confidence in the government’s direction, and pressed for a public inquiry into the decisions behind the Bipole III route and the cost overruns.
Why the issue is current again
The policy question has since moved into the federal mainstream. The federal strategy Powering Canada Strong, published in May 2026, treats regional grid integration as central to energy and economic security, noting that larger, more interconnected grids “enhance resiliency by pooling resources to offset shortages during peaks, outages, or extreme weather.” In June 2026 the federal government said it would prioritise financial and regulatory support for five transmission projects, among them an expansion of the Saskatchewan to Manitoba intertie of up to two gigawatts along the Regina to Winnipeg corridor.
Independent analysis points the same way. The Canada Energy Regulator’s 2024 modelling found that without interprovincial transmission expansion there would be roughly a quarter less interprovincial electricity trade by 2050, and that the implications are more significant in the western provinces than elsewhere.
None of this shows that any government adopted his proposal, and this page does not say so. What the record supports is narrower and still worth stating: he argued early, publicly and consistently for interprovincial transmission at a time when it was not on the national agenda, and it now is.
In Steven Fletcher’s words
Manitoba is blessed with an abundance of cheap, clean hydroelectric power. In Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, electricity is often generated using carbon-emitting fossil fuels. If Alberta utilized a few thousand megawatts of power from Manitoba, it could significantly reduce Alberta’s carbon footprint. The distance from Alberta’s oil fields to the hydro dams in Manitoba is approximately the same distance as the existing transmission lines that go from the Nelson River to Winnipeg. Therefore, we know that technology for the transmission of power at these distances already exists. When it comes to power, we have to look outside the provincial boxes.
The best thing Manitoba can do to reduce GHGs is to export its power east or west to Saskatchewan, Alberta and Ontario. Every unit of power that Manitoba can export is displacing a unit of power that has been created by fossil fuels. What other company in the world would say, we want to sell less of our product?
The best way to reduce GHGs is to use Manitoba hydro power to displace fossil-fuel-generated power. Send the power east or west, and it is greener than whatever the alternatives are. This would be a nation-building exercise: keystone Manitoba; be like the railway.
We used to be able to sell, say, for 10 cents a kilowatt hour on the spot market; now, we are lucky to get 1 and a half. And that is even if you can sell it.
The record in full
House of Commons
- 12 April 2010, debate on Bill C-9, raising the east-west grid and the cancelled Conawapa link.
- 14 May 2010, two opposition members describe his advocacy within his caucus.
- 10 February 2014, Statement by Members, “Electricity.”
Manitoba Legislative Assembly
- 11 May 2017 and 23 May 2017, Standing Committee on Legislative Affairs, Bill 19.
- 28 November 2017, reply to the Throne Speech, on Bipole III and the Public Utilities Board.
- 21 March 2018, member’s statement on the resignation of the Manitoba Hydro board.
- 19 June 2018, Interim Supply, on export prices and the Public Utilities Board.
- 1 November 2018, on supply, demand and rates.
- 7 November 2018, second reading of Bill 16, the fullest provincial statement.
- Private member’s bills 232 and 215, amending the Efficiency Manitoba Act.
Written by Steven Fletcher
- “Getting started on a national power grid,” iPolitics, 4 September 2013.
- “Look West, Hydro,” Winnipeg Free Press, 24 November 2015 (subscription).
Coverage
- “Fletcher wades in on hydro debate,” Winnipeg Free Press, 17 February 2007 (subscription).
- “Tory MP on bandwagon of east-west power grid,” Winnipeg Free Press, 16 August 2013 (subscription).
- “Western Power Line Sparks Interest,” Frontier Centre for Public Policy, 24 September 2013.
These citations are as complete as the record now allows. More will be added as they are found, and these pages change as the facts do. Where a source is a recollection rather than a document, it is identified as such.